5 months Ago
Janssen admitted that Eindhoven has multiple partnerships with Israeli institutions, but said the connection with Technion is "undisputable" because of its defence sector ties. The university, in turn, will establish a "sensitive collaborations" committee to review all future and current relationships with Israel academic and industrial institutions.
Dutch Universities' Trend
Eindhoven is not the only place taking such steps. Recently, they also cut links with three Israeli universities — Bar-Ilan University, the Hebrew University Israel, and Haifa University. Tilburg University also stopped its collaboration with Bar-Ilan and Reichman universities for the reason that they were closely related to the Israeli army.
The RH in Nijmegen did the same with Hebrew University of Tel Aviv University, which collaborates with the RH and could, according to the decision, contribute to structural human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories. Amsterdam University has also suspended student exchanges from the Hebrew University, although it maintains other academic contacts with boycott Israel.
Increased Attention on Research Connections
The investigative website reported that eight Dutch universities are still participating in 28 European-funded projects that may indirectly help the Israeli army. Eindhoven University was mentioned in eight of those projects. Janssen expressed hope that Eindhoven's action would spur a larger academic examination throughout the Netherlands on potentially having a national policy body to oversee sensitive collaborations.
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